A Blog About Stock Photography. John specializes in shooting stock photos including a mix of funny animal pictures with anthropomorphized pets (including dogs, cats, cows, elephants, monkeys and more), and concept stock photos for business and consumer communications. John's site includes interviews with photographers and leaders in the stock photo community as well as numerous articles on photography, digital imaging, and the stock photo business.

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

A new stock agency with a new approach, Evolve Images offers an innovative route to the business of stock photography.

A new stock agency with the intriguing name “Evolve Images” has opened its doors. The three founders of Evolve , Mark Ippolito, Robert Henson, and Jonothan Solomon certainly have a ton of experience between them having held numerous positions at such leading stock agencies as Getty Images, Corbis, Blend Images, Photodisc, and Comstock. What they are offering is a highly curated collection, a new method of pricing that seems sort of a RF and RM hybrid, and the promise of “Sustaining A Creative Economy”.

Their pricing model is simple. They claim that with three clicks you’ll have your price. You just choose editorial or commercial, choose digital, print, or both, choose one year, two years, or three years, and finally, choose an industry from their pull-down menu. There is also the option of “Requesting a quotation”. Those of us used to more criteria for Rights Managed pricing are at once pleased with the ease of use and left wondering if the pricing might be too general. I guess the only way to judge that is in the performance. If Evolve Images licenses enough photos who is going to argue? Evolve also emphasizes that they will pay the photographer (or copyright holder) at least 50% of the licensing fee. For images that Evolve represents exclusively the royalty paid to the creator is 65%. No argument there for sure! Another innovative approach includes price adjustments for more “valuable” images (though exactly how that value is determined is unclear to me).

On the submission side it is interesting to note that Evolve is willing to take on images captured on camera phones, stills edited from digital video capture, consumer-level digital cameras, etc. Evolve offers image exclusive distribution for one (1) year or non-exclusive image distribution for three (3) years, with auto-renewal at the end of the term unless notified 90 days prior to the contrary. Also of note, they are not planning on using any sub-agents. Another cool point is that they pay within two weeks of receiving fees.

After spending a fair amount of time on the Evolve Images site it certainly appears to me as if they are a photographer friendly outfit. In addition to rapid payment and high royalty percentages, they are also stressing image protection with a proactive enforcement policy. Evolve Images seems very transparent and are encouraging feedback through their blog. All-in-all, Evolve Images has a very interesting approach and I hope they succeed. I will be watching with interest!